Olympic Park, Beijing

An architectural competition for the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) is currently underway. The site of the vast (128,000 m2) museum is Beijing, not far from Herzog & de Meuron’s Olympic stadium. This promises to be one of the largest and most ambitious museums since the Getty Center and the Bilbao Guggenheim. Judging from some websites, unsuccessful entrants in the first stage included Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Ben van Berkel’s UNStudio. Not clear who else competed, but one supposes the usual suspects. Four firms have reached the final stage: Gehry Partners, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Safdie Architects. Three Pritzker Prize winners, and an outlier. Although Safdie has had an amazing year with the US Peace Institute, Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, the Sikh Cultural Center in Punjab, and the Marina Bay Sands complex in Singapore. The winner is expected to be announced shortly.